I'm curious as to which other systems MUDs have implemented to allow character progression through something other then hack'n'slash.

Currently in my MUD's design I'm trying to implement a system that allows balanced progression through numerous character paths. Things are running smoothly, with a hick-up or two every now and then, but since I'm not the first to stray from hack'n'slash I was curious to other people's methods.

I personally find hack'n'slash a fun type of gameplay however it just doesn't fit into a more "realistic" world. One where you don't become stronger by stabbing 100's of squirrels.

Currently the system I'm using starts everyone out with a "simple experience" perk/feat that allows everyone to gain a little bit of experience from basic actions such as killing, lock picking, trading ect.. Through levelling a character gains access to various "specialized" experience perks, such as one that rewards players a lot more exp for selling items while cutting out a bit of experience from other actions.

If anyone has done a similar style, how has it worked for you? Are there certain drawbacks? Areas which can be exploited? ect..

On the codebase I maintain there are two mainways of level promotion: gaining experience pointsand gaining quest points.

XP are pretty straightforward. Most typically yougain them from, as you say, killing lots of critters.

However, if you solve quests, you get XP and alsoQP. It's actually quicker to level by solving quests,since a quest can easily yield XP in the thousands.

For example, if a level 1 newbie solves the HiddenMansion Room quest, he's likely to gain 2 or 3levels right there, from the XP awarded.

In the stock codebase, you can get up to level 6 or 7 with almost no "grinding"…the combat you'd do could be just quest-related, not just mayhem todrain XP from living things.

I got into text games through old interactive fictiongames, like Zork. To me, solving puzzles and completingquests are an important part of a fun game. A mudthat is just a squirrel slaughterhouse would strikeme as not very fun.

Obviously questing is the most commonly efficient way of doing things.Grinding via killing things is okay too, but to stray from the hacknslash methods, I recommend putting in a series of RP rewards.

Case and point, players on sandstorm can build houses, but they need materials,materials are hard to find/harvest, so to gain exp, you could add in a system where harvesting materials for a similar style system yields xp.

Also with that, players could open their own shops, and sell their mats, which in-turn yields experience for RP.

Another thing that I've done, is skill progression, when your skill advances (through usage) you gain experience, not all skills can be combat related.

Another case/point is my climbing skill, players need it to scale mountains (going up/down in sect_mountain) if they don't have it, they often fall to their deaths. In anycase, when it advances, they gain experience. same goes for the swimming skill, and a whole slue of others.

The point is, there are plenty of methods of gaining experience.

Note, there is a exploration system, which tells you how many rooms of an area you have explored, you could implement that and when you've explored an entire area, (all vnums within) you gain experience for it.

Other things I've seen done, are more RP rewards, stuff like not using global channels during game-play, after X amount of updates of staying in RP, you gain a bonus. So that lovely gossip channel, using it, stops you from gaining bonus RP xp. (without idling to get the perk either)

Another thing you could do is add in a rescue system, where-as if you rescue someone from the brink of death, it gains you experience, whether rescue meaning you getting into the combat and killing the monster (hackish) or you creating a method to help them get away from a 'bad situation'

Ultimatly its up to you, but afew simple things like that are a good way to go about things. Quests are the big ones, puzzle solving and the likes help make a game truly entertaining, and give you an opportunity to yield a nice experiency reward :)

Another thing that I've done, is skill progression, when your skill advances (through usage) you gain experience, not all skills can be combat related.

Awarding xp for skill advances is one thing, but it can be extrapolated to general skill usage (for when the skill is completely learned, assuming the game has such a point). I can give you a couple examples:

Crafting commands (sewing/forging/chiseling/etc) could grant xp on successful creation of an item, with the amount dependent on the quality of the item.

Lockpicking could grant xp based on the difficulty of the lock picked (assumes a skill based system with differing levels of locks)

Another natural one extending from above is stealing - award xp based on the quality of item stolen from the level/strength of character (PC/NPC)

Fishing - simple mini-game found in a lot of MUDs - award xp based on the quality of the catch

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Note, there is a exploration system, which tells you how many rooms of an area you have explored, you could implement that and when you've explored an entire area, (all vnums within) you gain experience for it.

This is another very viable option, with some extensions as:

1. Xp awarded for entering a new area the first time2. Xp awarded for encountering/killing (optional) a new monster for the first time3. Xp awarded for exploring certain percentages of the total game world (10%, 25%, etc)

Finally, since the point to this was finding ways to earn xp without killing NPCs (offense) - has anyone ever considered gaining xp based on defense? It would be highly dependent on the particular combat system, but I know in my game and a few others I can think of (God Wars II comes to mind), there are active options for defense: parrying, dodging, tripping, restraining. You could extend it to include fleeing and any stealth elements (sneaking, evading aggressive/tracking NPCs via invisibility or hiding).

These are just some suggestions off the top of my head. I've been in the process of trying to get some stuff like this into my game for a long time now.

I personally find hack'n'slash a fun type of gameplay however it just doesn't fit into a more "realistic" world. One where you don't become stronger by stabbing 100's of squirrels.

Currently the system I'm using starts everyone out with a "simple experience" perk/feat that allows everyone to gain a little bit of experience from basic actions such as killing, lock picking, trading ect..

Doesn't that have the exact same realism problem though, with players potentially becoming better fighters exclusively through trading and picking locks?

A more common solution to that particular problem, which Darien also mentioned, is to have skills improve through use - so picking locks makes you better at picking locks, trading makes you better at trading, and fighting with a sword makes you better at fighting with swords. This type of character advancement is often used as an alternative to levels, with varying degrees of success.

I personally find hack'n'slash a fun type of gameplay however it just doesn't fit into a more "realistic" world. One where you don't become stronger by stabbing 100's of squirrels.

I dunno if its because its early for me or what, but I found that comment pretty funny. On a side note, for TGA we do it a lot like Darien, where skill usage causes you to gain experience, as well as fighting. But we have weighted skills (especially non combat ones) in a way which using those skills say 10x gains the same exp as using the combat skills 30x.

There are many options to expand how to go about gaining experience. Recently I saw a mud where the player didn't level, you got better by gaining new skills, which you had to purchase (via in-game gold) skills had level's, unlike the percentile system that diku muds have, (max of 5 levels) each skill, which as they were used, went up in level, (no practicing ability either, so it was pure use)

A system like that, can change the entire outlook on how a mud progresses, breaking the standard mold sort-of-speak.

In anycase, pending how you the developer feel your mud should go, should ultimately dictate how it is developed, changing how to gain experience is a great method, finding ways todo it can be a fun chore for a coder, but obscure changes like no leveling, pure skill/equipment based mudding changes things. In a mud like that, attaining higher skills is obviously the main goal, and there can be several ways of doing it, which in-turn, becomes another fun way a developer can mutilate their code.

Anyways, Vatiken, my point is, don't just limit yourself to methods of gaining experience to drive people away from hack/slash, there are plenty of ways to do it. Just think out side of the box. Jump onto afew random muds, make sure they are different types, and play them abit, see how they handle things, maybe you'll find the design your looking for yourself, and then you can emulate it, with your own unique spin on it.

My favorite, again, is BatMUD. Back when I played it, you created your character by picking a race. Some races had built-in advantages, and thus cost more experience to level up. There were no caps on stats, they would go as high as you could get them (well, up to INT_MAX, I'm sure), but it was a diminishing return formula, so each point cost more to buy, and did less for you. As you played the game, you found guilds to join that gave you your class abilities.

They had the concept that everything cost experience. You had a physical "body" level, which cost an amount based on your race. That determined things like your hit points, mana, etc. You also had between one and three guild levels (you could multi-class up to three), which granted you your abilities. Some guilds wouldn't accept members who were the wrong race, or who belong to rival guilds. Finally, raising your stats was done seperate from either of those… if you wanted more strength, you spent experience on it.

The clincher was that when you died, you lost all the unspent experience you were carrying around with you at the time. So, you had to decide… do I spend it on small things now, or try to save up for a level and risk losing it?

This brings me to the discussion. :) There were several guilds whose primary focus was NOT hack-and-slash. If you played a pure healer, not only did your experience come from the healing you did – but you didn't have the ability to fight, at all! A healer could ressurect dead players, and that player would then only lose half their carried exp… the healer would gain the other half.

Another popular class was the merchant. Merchants also didn't fight (they could, just not very well). Their experience came from identifying things, selling things, and their ever-popular ability MIP (Money Is Power). They could convert a chunk of money into experience for someone else, and they'd get a share. So, you'd offer up 2 million gold, and gain 500K experience – the merchant would gain 500K experience as well.

As far as "realism" goes, Kavir is right that becoming a better fighter through picking locks doesn't make much sense either, however gaining experience through ONLY fighting makes even less sense. I suppose the biggest problem with skill experience is deciding on how much experience to reward, and how often. Combat experience I suppose should be far greater then say fishing experience to the risk involved. If you don't catch a fish, you try again…tada. If you fail to kill the 3 eyed trouser snake, then you're dead and rightfully embarressed. You also risk losing items and experience. That being said though, say catching a fish rewards you with 2 XP, and killing the snake gives you 10 XP, I am willing to bet within a week of opening (assuming I get a player or two), I'll find someone with a script that has them constantly fishing until they reach the level max.

Giving a little respect to myself as a coder and game designer, I don't believe I have any skills which could easily manipulated in such away, that being said there are good scripters out there. It's something to tinker with anyway.

As far as skills gaining "levels", I've run a system as such before, and I do like the way it works. My choice to go a different route this time was merely trying a different take then before. To be honest, it's a more "realistic" approach to skill building but in the MUD i'm working on, I wanted a more "concrete" character build. Where ever skill choice made a significant impact.

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Anyways, Vatiken, my point is, don't just limit yourself to methods of gaining experience to drive people away from hack/slash, there are plenty of ways to do it.

To be perfectly honest, I've been coding the core gameplay mechanic for almost a year now and the reason I started this thread was more of a combination of curiosity and to just create a MUD Design related thread. Too few of them these days, especially over at TMC where 9/10 posts are for MUD Promotion, and 5/9 are by the same person. There were many ideas brought up and I'm sure 1 or two will sit in the back of my head and come to me somewhere down the line when I need to adjust things.

But just to clear, It's not that I necessarily want to drive people away from hack/slash, but to provide other VALID options. And by Valid I mean ways that offer a similar reward in a similar amount of time within a similar difficulty. Too often do I see and play games that offer "open-world" gameplay, where a character can be/do what they want. And when you play you end up being in pushed into 1 role. Take Fallout 3 for example, instead of being a small-guns oriented good guy, you try to be an hand-to-hand oriented bad guy. First off, EVERYONE has guns, so you've already shot yourself in the foot. And if you take the bad guy route you pretty much ruin your "main quest" within the first 30 minutes of gameplay.

That's a round about way of saying I don't want players logging in and having to choose hack'n'slash, OR shoot themselves in the foot. If I choose to take "software manipulation/lock pick" over "small firearms/dodge", am I gonna be royally screwed in a few levels unable to do anything worthwhile?

the reason I started this thread was more of a combination of curiosity and to just create a MUD Design related thread. Too few of them these days, especially over at TMC where 9/10 posts are for MUD Promotion, and 5/9 are by the same person

THANK YOU! I completely agree… I was making a similar point in another thread a week or two ago.

I suppose the biggest problem with skill experience is deciding on how much experience to reward, and how often. Combat experience I suppose should be far greater then say fishing experience to the risk involved.

Why is that? Do you become a better fighter after an hour of practice than a better fisherman after an hour of practice?

IMO it's more that there aren't many good fighters because they tend to get killed during the process of becoming experienced, whereas craftsmen don't. But that doesn't mean that you learn to fight particularly faster than you learn to fish.

EDIT: I realize now that you might have been talking only about the game mechanics, and would like to reward activities based on risk involved, and not making a general statement about time it takes to learn things. In that case, sure, I agree that you should be rewarded more if you have a higher risk of failure – well, only if failure actually means something. If failure just means "oops, try again" then there isn't any real risk involved.

On a ROM MUD, for example, a skill or spell is 1-100%. Generally speaking, automatic skills (ones without commands like second attack or parry) go up automatically as you fight. Combat skills like bash or disarm can improve when you use them. Similarly, spells go up when you cast them.

How does one go about giving a worthwhile amount of experience for skill improvements for things like spells? Should a character be able to level up twice by typing CAST FIREBALL over and over?

I've always played MUDs where skills worked like this, and it's always grueling trying to drown 1,389,123 fishes to master the drown spell so you can get the next one or fight twice as many Orcs do your parry wont suck.

Harder to learn in my books, should yield more experience then easy to learn.

And remember, in rom, when choosing skills at creation, you can bump up how hard it is to infact, level your character.so the more skills you add, the harder, and harder it gets, so rewards like this effectively take care of the gap people get when they load up on hard-to-learn skills for a selected class.

Anyways, thats how I did it on CombatMud (my newest beast) anyways, hope that answers your question.

I'm curious as to which other systems MUDs have implemented to allow character progression through something other then hack'n'slash.

Currently in my MUD's design I'm trying to implement a system that allows balanced progression through numerous character paths. Things are running smoothly, with a hick-up or two every now and then, but since I'm not the first to stray from hack'n'slash I was curious to other people's methods.

In the game I'm working on, I have a scoring system that awards points for each "path" taken through a dungeon. A "path" is a logical path through the dungeon and not necessarily a physical path. That is one score points for using objects in various ways. Some ways are better than others (as determined by the creator of the dungeon) and trigger bonus scores. Anyway, character progression is done by avoiding death and spending a calculated fraction of those points on one's character stats.

Vatiken said:

I personally find hack'n'slash a fun type of gameplay however it just doesn't fit into a more "realistic" world. One where you don't become stronger by stabbing 100's of squirrels.

As far as "realism" goes, Kavir is right that becoming a better fighter through picking locks doesn't make much sense either, however gaining experience through ONLY fighting makes even less sense.

In the typical mud, experience gives you levels, and levels improve your fighting ability. With such an approach to character advancement, awarding experience exclusively for fighting does kind of make sense - people are getting better at fighting through fighting.

Where it becomes illogical is when the experience can be used for something completely unrelated to the method through which it was earned, such as earning experience for crafting which then improves your fighting ability. Unless every class gets better at crafting each time they gain a level, you run into this problem should you decide to reward crafting with experience.

The approach used by Fable is a rather interesting one, where you earn four different types of experience (General, Strength, Skill and Will). For example casting spells grants you Will experience, which can then be spent to increase your existing spells or buy new ones. Of course this still allows you to gain experience for attack spells and then use it to improve your healing spells, but at least your spells don't improve through physical combat.

This issue was also the reason why I decided to call experience "primal energy" in my mud. Players absorb primal energy from the lifeforce of their victims, and use it to enhance their supernatural abilities. I guess you could compare it with the Quickening in Highlander - immortals gain power from decapitating each other, but they don't receive any Quickening from fishing or baking bread.